Publish Open Access
Open Access is the principle that published research findings should be freely accessible and re-usable. Since the 1990s growing numbers of academics, research organisations, funders and some publishers have been campaigning for, and promoting access to, research through Open Access journals and publications repositories. Research Councils UK adopted an Open Access policy for its funded researchers in 2013.
Open Access is now a major paradigm for the dissemination of academic research, and has considerably challenged the pay-to-view subscription journal model.
The University requires its staff to deposit (copyright permissions allowing) a copy of all forms of published research in PURE so as to support Open Access and meet the requirements of research funders in the UK (and internationally) who now encourage or mandate OA.
Ulster’s Open Access support information site explains the issues around OA, REF and your research in more detail and the Research & Impact team at Ulster have developed a series of resources, in this website, to help you through the process of making your research OA.
The website summarizes UKRI’s new Open Access policy. It outlines actions that researchers publishing UKRI-funded research must take to make sure research outputs comply with the new policy.
You don’t have to sacrifice quality or academic freedom
You don’t have to sacrifice quality or academic freedom to publish openly.
There are many high-quality open access journals and there are many publishers who are committed to advancing open access publishing e.g. Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
It is important to remember that open publishing is not restricted to these journals.
You can publish in almost any journal you like and make a version of your manuscript available (self-archive) on your personal website or in an open repository following publishers embargo periods.
Look up your publisher’s embargo using the JISC Open Policy finder and use the same tools to check the version of your manuscript that you can upload to PURE.
